7 ms·

Awesome new (relatively inexpensive) Brain-Computer Interface

57 points by speek 17y ago

motters 17y ago
Looks nice, and I've seen the Marvin Minsky demo, but the fact that there is no Linux version means it would probably be useless to me. I'm not sure how practical these interfaces will turn out to be, other than for entertainment purposes.
- jimfl 17y ago
  The fact that there is no linux version is no impediment to determined hackers.
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chaosmachine 17y ago
It's exciting to think where this could take us in 10 years. Remember the first mp3 players? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0b/Rio_pmp300.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0b/Rio_pmp300.jpg Now we have stuff like this: http://i50.tinypic.com/30cn1va.jpg http://i50.tinypic.com/30cn1va.jpg Computer assisted telepathy, here we come.
- fbailey 17y ago
  you are comparing a mp3 player with a tiny computer, would make much more sense to compare it to a large computer
mariorz 17y ago
i'm dubious these things can accurately interpret anything more than face muscle tensions, eye-movement if that. which are common noise sources in EEG recordings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography#Artifacts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography#Artifact... anyone have some anecdotes otherwise? the demos on youtube are not really satisfying.
- figital 17y ago
  You can eliminate noise/artifact like that by subtracting it from a reference point.
  - mariorz 17y ago
    but they don't seem to be doing that since "expressive" is one of the detection aspects they mention.
    - figital 17y ago
      I think that's just "eyebrows went up, smiling muscles contracted, blinked", etc. for the look-my-emoticon-changed marketing effect. They also claim there's a gyroscope in the device. The more advanced EEG tech is quite real. It's a stretch to say that it's interacting with your "thoughts" ... making something like PacMan move forward/backward is a similar sensation to when you first figured out how to wiggle your nose (the mental exercise, not the muscle movement).
jcl 17y ago
Please note that the developer headset and the EPOC consumer headsets are a separate line of hardware products and are not interchangeable. The developer headset supports development whereas the consumer headsets ($299) will only work with approved applications. Or: "Please pay us an additional $200 for the chance to create anything that would create a demand for our product." No mention of the cost of "approval".
- runinit 17y ago
  And you need to pay them anywhere from 750 to 7500$ bucks to develop an application for it...
  - speek 17y ago
    Developer headset is 500 bucks, Research edition (developer headset with EEG access) is 750, or 650 if you bought a developer headset a while ago.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Agreed, although they're adjusting, slowly. I came across this earlier this year but they didn't even have a proper developer program at that time. One can get pick up used EEG equipment pretty cheap on eBay, however, and there are some open development tools from the scientific community that run on Linux, as I recall.
- mkyc 17y ago
  $300 is accessible to "hobbyist" researchers (hackers) - this is the main point of this story - and hackers will crack DRM.
- anotherjesse 17y ago
  I guess I should have read the fine print. I ordered the $300 device after they sent an email a couple months ago. It supposedly has shipped and will arrive any moment - I didn't realize it would be cripple-ware
  - 17y ago
moron4hire 17y ago
I don't know, it seems an awful lot like listening to a conference hall for one user's voice commands in an unknown language. Brain-wave activity is largely unknown, not understood, and noisy as hell. There isn't even any concrete evidence that distinct portions of the brain are singularly or wholly responsible for specific tasks. Anything we do related to the brain in this period of human development is not much more than witch doctoring.
- clistctrl 17y ago
  I'm only theorizing here, but I don't think its trying to look at a specific part of the brain, then determine what you're thinking. It seems to me like there are common actions people can perform that render similar results across everyone (for example it seems like smiling is one) if that is true then you simply need to train the computer what your particular brain looks like after performing this action. Once you have that, you simply map that action to your desired output. The concept is simple (though i'm sure the implementation is wildly complex)
  - andreyf 17y ago
    The concept is simple (though i'm sure the implementation is wildly complex) Those sound like famous last words :)
  - jcl 17y ago
    it seems like smiling is one Smiling is perhaps a bad example, since it contracts a muscle near the sensors. When someone is smiling, it's probably hard to detect anything else.
    - joeyo 17y ago
      > Smiling is perhaps a bad example, since it contracts a > muscle near the sensors. This is no doubt intentional.
- blhack 17y ago
  This is why you would likely have to "train" it. edit: here is a relevant link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40L3SGmcPDQ&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40L3SGmcPDQ&feature=relat... They begin training it at about 13 minutes in.
figital 17y ago
I've taken various classes in Neurofeedback interaction design. The biggest obstacle to getting work done was the frustration of hooking electrodes up to your own scalp. Also, circa 2005 the lowest barrier of entry for interactivity was through a Flash gateway in the BioExplorer IDE (http://www.cyberevolution.com http://www.cyberevolution.com) ... whereas now I think with Air you could send event messages to something like processing.js, flot, jQuery, HTML5 <audio/video>, sparklines, etc.
- neurotech1 17y ago
  I'm an EEG technician, with a background in electronics and programming. I use BioExplorer for neurofeedback routinely. I suspect that the emotiv system relies on conditioning (eg. if i do action "A" - the computer moves the pointer up on the screen), not real EEG pattern recognition. For the record, BioEra (www.bioera.net) does have support OCZ NIA system - cheaper, and no developer road-blocks. BTW Your 100% on the mark about reducing artifacts. There is no substitute for a good connection to the scalp. Edit: www.bioera.net for details
  - figital 17y ago
    @neurotech1 : Thanks for the BioEra link. Hadn't heard of it. Have you run into any development tools that will allow you to send threshold triggers quickly enough to a web browser rendering engine?? (like BioExplorer does with their Flash gateway)
    - neurotech1 17y ago
      You could probably hack Javascript function to work with the BioEra XMLServer. Something vaguely similar to AJAX but I wouldn't consider it "standard" AJAX programming.
  - handey 17y ago
    > There is no substitute for a good connection to the scalp. Most people don't realize that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer.
klipt 17y ago
Looks like you can achieve near 100% accuracy with one caveat - the electrodes have to be inside your skull, not on top of it: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/12/23/1511251/Typing-With-Your-Brain http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/12/23/1511251/Typing-W... >>...an experiment involving two patients with epilepsy. Both patients were already being monitored for seizure activity using electrocorticography (ECoG), in which a sheet of electrodes is laid directly on the surface of the brain. This procedure requires a craniotomy, a surgical incision into the skull. Dr. Shih and colleagues hypothesized that feedback from electrodes placed directly on the brain would be much more specific than data collected with EEG (electroencephalography) alone, in which electrodes are placed on the scalp. Most studies of mind-machine interaction have occurred with EEG. "There is a big difference in the quality of information you get from ECoG compared to EEG. The scalp and bony skull diffuses and distorts the signal, rather like how the Earth's atmosphere blurs the light from stars," says Dr. Shih. "That's why progress to date on developing these kinds of mind interfaces has been slow."<<

57 points by speek 17y ago

Looks nice, and I've seen the Marvin Minsky demo, but the fact that there is no Linux version means it would probably be useless to me. I'm not sure how practical these interfaces will turn out to be, other than for entertainment purposes.

jimfl 17y ago
The fact that there is no linux version is no impediment to determined hackers.

merrychristmas 17y ago

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chaosmachine 17y ago

It's exciting to think where this could take us in 10 years. Remember the first mp3 players? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0b/Rio_pmp300.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0b/Rio_pmp300.jpg Now we have stuff like this: http://i50.tinypic.com/30cn1va.jpg http://i50.tinypic.com/30cn1va.jpg Computer assisted telepathy, here we come.

fbailey 17y ago
you are comparing a mp3 player with a tiny computer, would make much more sense to compare it to a large computer

mariorz 17y ago

i'm dubious these things can accurately interpret anything more than face muscle tensions, eye-movement if that. which are common noise sources in EEG recordings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography#Artifacts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography#Artifact... anyone have some anecdotes otherwise? the demos on youtube are not really satisfying.

figital 17y ago
You can eliminate noise/artifact like that by subtracting it from a reference point.
- mariorz 17y ago
  but they don't seem to be doing that since "expressive" is one of the detection aspects they mention.
  - figital 17y ago
    I think that's just "eyebrows went up, smiling muscles contracted, blinked", etc. for the look-my-emoticon-changed marketing effect. They also claim there's a gyroscope in the device. The more advanced EEG tech is quite real. It's a stretch to say that it's interacting with your "thoughts" ... making something like PacMan move forward/backward is a similar sensation to when you first figured out how to wiggle your nose (the mental exercise, not the muscle movement).

jcl 17y ago

Please note that the developer headset and the EPOC consumer headsets are a separate line of hardware products and are not interchangeable. The developer headset supports development whereas the consumer headsets ($299) will only work with approved applications. Or: "Please pay us an additional $200 for the chance to create anything that would create a demand for our product." No mention of the cost of "approval".

runinit 17y ago
And you need to pay them anywhere from 750 to 7500$ bucks to develop an application for it...
- speek 17y ago
  Developer headset is 500 bucks, Research edition (developer headset with EEG access) is 750, or 650 if you bought a developer headset a while ago.
anigbrowl 17y ago
Agreed, although they're adjusting, slowly. I came across this earlier this year but they didn't even have a proper developer program at that time. One can get pick up used EEG equipment pretty cheap on eBay, however, and there are some open development tools from the scientific community that run on Linux, as I recall.
mkyc 17y ago
$300 is accessible to "hobbyist" researchers (hackers) - this is the main point of this story - and hackers will crack DRM.
anotherjesse 17y ago
I guess I should have read the fine print. I ordered the $300 device after they sent an email a couple months ago. It supposedly has shipped and will arrive any moment - I didn't realize it would be cripple-ware
- 17y ago

moron4hire 17y ago

I don't know, it seems an awful lot like listening to a conference hall for one user's voice commands in an unknown language. Brain-wave activity is largely unknown, not understood, and noisy as hell. There isn't even any concrete evidence that distinct portions of the brain are singularly or wholly responsible for specific tasks. Anything we do related to the brain in this period of human development is not much more than witch doctoring.

clistctrl 17y ago
I'm only theorizing here, but I don't think its trying to look at a specific part of the brain, then determine what you're thinking. It seems to me like there are common actions people can perform that render similar results across everyone (for example it seems like smiling is one) if that is true then you simply need to train the computer what your particular brain looks like after performing this action. Once you have that, you simply map that action to your desired output. The concept is simple (though i'm sure the implementation is wildly complex)
- andreyf 17y ago
  The concept is simple (though i'm sure the implementation is wildly complex) Those sound like famous last words :)
- jcl 17y ago
  it seems like smiling is one Smiling is perhaps a bad example, since it contracts a muscle near the sensors. When someone is smiling, it's probably hard to detect anything else.
  - joeyo 17y ago
    > Smiling is perhaps a bad example, since it contracts a > muscle near the sensors. This is no doubt intentional.
blhack 17y ago
This is why you would likely have to "train" it. edit: here is a relevant link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40L3SGmcPDQ&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40L3SGmcPDQ&feature=relat... They begin training it at about 13 minutes in.

figital 17y ago

I've taken various classes in Neurofeedback interaction design. The biggest obstacle to getting work done was the frustration of hooking electrodes up to your own scalp. Also, circa 2005 the lowest barrier of entry for interactivity was through a Flash gateway in the BioExplorer IDE (http://www.cyberevolution.com http://www.cyberevolution.com) ... whereas now I think with Air you could send event messages to something like processing.js, flot, jQuery, HTML5 <audio/video>, sparklines, etc.

neurotech1 17y ago
I'm an EEG technician, with a background in electronics and programming. I use BioExplorer for neurofeedback routinely. I suspect that the emotiv system relies on conditioning (eg. if i do action "A" - the computer moves the pointer up on the screen), not real EEG pattern recognition. For the record, BioEra (www.bioera.net) does have support OCZ NIA system - cheaper, and no developer road-blocks. BTW Your 100% on the mark about reducing artifacts. There is no substitute for a good connection to the scalp. Edit: www.bioera.net for details
- figital 17y ago
  @neurotech1 : Thanks for the BioEra link. Hadn't heard of it. Have you run into any development tools that will allow you to send threshold triggers quickly enough to a web browser rendering engine?? (like BioExplorer does with their Flash gateway)
  - neurotech1 17y ago
    You could probably hack Javascript function to work with the BioEra XMLServer. Something vaguely similar to AJAX but I wouldn't consider it "standard" AJAX programming.
- handey 17y ago
  > There is no substitute for a good connection to the scalp. Most people don't realize that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer.

klipt 17y ago

Looks like you can achieve near 100% accuracy with one caveat - the electrodes have to be inside your skull, not on top of it: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/12/23/1511251/Typing-With-Your-Brain http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/12/23/1511251/Typing-W... >>...an experiment involving two patients with epilepsy. Both patients were already being monitored for seizure activity using electrocorticography (ECoG), in which a sheet of electrodes is laid directly on the surface of the brain. This procedure requires a craniotomy, a surgical incision into the skull. Dr. Shih and colleagues hypothesized that feedback from electrodes placed directly on the brain would be much more specific than data collected with EEG (electroencephalography) alone, in which electrodes are placed on the scalp. Most studies of mind-machine interaction have occurred with EEG. "There is a big difference in the quality of information you get from ECoG compared to EEG. The scalp and bony skull diffuses and distorts the signal, rather like how the Earth's atmosphere blurs the light from stars," says Dr. Shih. "That's why progress to date on developing these kinds of mind interfaces has been slow."<<